


these little things called pyrrhic victories

by RestlessWanderings



Category: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: AU where Obi-Wan is slightly more loyal to the Jedi Code than Anakin, Angst, Battle of Mustafar, Blood, Canon Divergence - Battle of Mustafar, Corpses, Hurt No Comfort, Internal Conflict, Jedi Temple Massacre, Order 66, Post-Order 66, Sad, Tissue Warning, and it only changes One Big Thing, dead bodies, limbs get cut off, major character deaths, slight obikin probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RestlessWanderings/pseuds/RestlessWanderings
Summary: He is a Jedi, and duty always comes first.Even if that duty is going to rip his heart out.(Or, the one where Obi-Wan follows Yoda's orders and kills Anakin, which changes some things but leaves others the same.)





	these little things called pyrrhic victories

It goes like this: 

Utapau is a blur. He remembers a beat of silence, like hearing the snap of a bone but not yet registering the pain. A sharp inhale through chapped lips, eyes wide and blood rushing in his head. His heart beating once, twice, and he imagines he can hear the Force itself being ripped apart.

He remembers Cody turning his weapon on him, remembers the shock and pain and falling. He remembers hitting the water hard and thinking it fitting that as Jedi fall around the galaxy, he fall too. He remembers his instincts kicking in, unable to be fought after years of honing them as weapons.

He remembers swimming until he reaches a pebbled shoreline, remembers sneaking past his own battalion and stealing one of his ships, setting the coordinates to Coruscant. He remembers checking his mental link with Anakin and almost collapsing in relief – he’s alive. Distant in a way that sends the hairs on the back of his neck standing, but _alive._ Mostly he remembers his pulse in his ear and the fine, nearly imperceptible trembling running through his body. 

Each step carries Obi-Wan over a corpse. He can’t look down and know who is dead, can’t bear to look into unseeing eyes. Perhaps if he doesn’t look he’ll wake up from this nightmare.

Horror sweeps over him as he picks his way over bodies, heading towards the end of the Great Hall. His skin crawls with the violation of it all. There’s always been a measure of assurance that the gleaming walls of the Jedi Temple could never be breached. Now, however, it’s hard to imagine the halls ever filled with life. There’s no warmth, no serenity. He shivers at the absence of it. Echoes of the last battle linger, and the Force feels raw and wounded. Each time he reaches for it there’s no solace to be found.

The cries of pain and desperation ring through the Force. He can feel them like whispers against his skin, like phantom hands grabbing at his robes and begging for mercy. Bile rises in his throat and he swallows. Something like a whimper escapes him as the echoes form into images in his mind.

A newly knighted Jedi, so fresh his hair is still in a nerf-tail, pleading with a Clone, saying _Scraps, it’s me, snap out of it, wake up!_ A Jedi blocking her padawan, already injured in a battle from a few days ago and only just recovered, from a volley of blaster shots before pushing her apprentice away and yelling _go, leave me, get out of here_ before being shot by her own Captain. Jedi too badly injured to be fighting lighting their ‘sabers, desperate to buy whatever time they can before being shot down. Knights stationed in front of the crèche gasping out pleas and using their last breaths to beg _don’t, not the younglings, spare the children, please!_ Children no older than six or seven huddled together, confused and frightened and not knowing what’s happening, saying _the Clones, they’re here, they’ll help us!_

The Dark Side of the Force grows stronger the further he walks. It grates against his skin, making him falter. Four more Force Signatures flicker out, one after another, and he flinches as they do. _This carnage will never end,_ he thinks, staring into nothing. _They’ll chase us down like prey and slaughter us all._ Another Signature disappears from the Force. The hunt has only just begun.

Finally, Obi-Wan allows himself to see. He blinks hard once, twice, shaking his head to force away the grey fog that’s muddled his vision. Blaster and lightsaber marks pepper the walls and columns of the Great Hall. Clone and Jedi bodies alike blanket the ground. There’s not enough air. He drops to his knees and he’s shaking too hard, gasping, and he’ll smell the stench of scorched stone and the burnt bodies for days, for months, for years, and and _and –_

 "Breathe you must." 

A green hand rests on his shoulders as his own hands clench into fists. Right. Breathing. After everything, he can at least keep his lungs moving. If Yoda is alive, surely this can be - if not fixed, if not healed, then at least endured.

His breathing settles as he seizes the distraction of Yoda’s presence. “Who?” he asks. “Who could have done this?”

Yoda shakes his head, grief dulling his eyes. “Finish this last mission, you should. Try to come back, others will. They must not.”

Obi-Wan stands and together they step over more bodies. He forces himself to look at each face, sending a quick prayer to the Force that Anakin is still alive, somewhere in the galaxy. Though their master-padawan link has long since been left alone, if he concentrates he can still sense Anakin’s presence enough to know that he’s alive. It’s a bit weak but it’s enough to ground him, to let him look into the faces of the dead and commit them all to memory.

He sighs as they enter the library. The statues of long-dead Masters glare balefully at him. He keeps his eyes to the ground, feeling as though he’s marching to his execution. He feels like a thief in the night, sneaking about to set up the looped, coded transmission to tell everyone to stay away. He clenches his jaw at the thought of it. _This is supposed to be home, to be sanctuary, not some heist._

Yoda steps aside as Obi-Wan begins encrypting the message. It takes a few minutes, but once he’s done he slips the message disc into the slot with all the others.

“It will take the Clones a while to get through that. A week at least, I believe,” he says, sitting down at the terminal beside the discs and selecting the day’s security log.

Yoda touches his arm. “Find nothing but pain, you will, if watch those, you do. Better left to the Force, some things are.”

He pauses, glaring at the keyboard. “And what, exactly, has the Force done to protect us in the last twenty-four hours, Master? Where was the warning? Where was the mercy?” All the fight leaves him in a rush and his shoulders droop. “I must know."

He doesn’t ask how his pain could possibly get worse. Has not everything he’s ever known already been ripped away from him? 

After a moment, Yoda removes his hand. “Warn you, don’t say I did not.”

The smile he replies with is weak, and feels stitched on. “Of course, Master.”

Yoda moves away, but he can sense the Grandmaster’s eyes on him as he turns on the holoprojector and plays the tapes. He numbly watches the massacre, fast forwarding, fully expecting to see Palpatine’s - or rather, Sidious’ - monstrous face. Instead it shows - 

Oh.

_Oh._

His heart stops beating. His stomach drops and it feels as though he’s burning. He stumbles back, shaking his head, unable to look away as Anakin mercilessly slaughters his _family_ with not hint of humanity or hesitation. When Anakin steps into the Crèche Obi-Wan reaches a hand out as though to stop him.

He feels as though he’s watching his own life end. A horrible, broken noise rips itself from his chest. 

And to think he thought nothing could ever match the pain of seeing his own Master die in front of him, of the feeling of thousands of Jedi dying in the span of seconds. But as Anakin kneels in front of the Sith Lord and swears his allegiance, he realizes he’s never known pain like this.

“No,” he rasps, barely able to speak around the lump in his throat. “This cannot be. Anything but this."

He wants to deny it. He wants to say it’s one of Sidious’ machinations – a clone, perhaps, or a perfectly disguised droid. For a moment, he has the wild thought of erasing the evidence and proclaiming himself as the killer of more than ten thousand Jedi. But the Force, for all that it’s hurting, doesn’t lie. All the little things over the years begin to add up and as the pieces begin to click into place his knees go weak and his back hits the wall behind him. His hands shake so much he can barely turn off the recording.

His voice catches and breaks, and tears burn his eyes. “No, anything but this, anyone but him, please –”

Yoda comes towards him, offering no comfort except an empathetic gaze. “After Sidious, I go. After Anakin, go, you will.”

Obi-Wan registers the unsaid order with a shake of his head. “Please,” he begs, “let me go after the Sith Lord. Don’t make me - not Anakin, not him, never him - I couldn't - I can’t – _please –”_

“Too powerful, the Sith Master is. Kill him, you cannot. Killed, you would be.”

 _I don’t care,_ he thinks. A hysterical laugh bubbles up in his chest but doesn’t leave his throat. _Perhaps I really am a bit too suicidal for my own good._

Yoda softens and takes Obi-Wan’s hand in his. He squeezes. “The boy you trained, gone, he is. Anakin he is no longer. Stopped, the Sith must be.”

Obi-Wan can’t refute it. He is a Jedi. His duty must come first, no matter how painful, no matter how much it will rip his heart out to do so. He is a Jedi, and duty always comes first. He blinks away tears.

“I will do as you bid me, Master,” he says, his voice sounding dull and bleak even to his own ears. “But know that no matter what happens, you will never see me again.”

The Grandmaster nods, ears drooping and more hunched than usual. “Farewell, then, this is. Knowing you, an honor, it has been.” He lets go of Obi-Wan’s hand after a final squeeze. “May the Force be with you, young one.”

“May the Force be with you as well, Master,” he replies. 

He watches Yoda until he disappears behind a corner. Then, he straightens and begins to trace Yoda’s footsteps. He pauses in front of one of the statues and peers into the stone eyes.

“Did you know, Master, what would befall the galaxy when you rescued that slave boy?” he asks, knowing he won’t get an answer, but desperate for some sort of explanation. “Could you have possibly imagined it?” The statue, of course, doesn’t reply, and the laugh that slips from Obi-Wan’s lips is dark and ugly. “Maverick Jedi indeed. Tell me, how does it feel to know that with a single action, you condemned billions to death?” The pain that ghosts over him is old and fading, a wound that never scarred properly. 

Obi-Wan sighs. “Who would have thought the stubbornness of Qui-Gon Jinn would decide the fate of the galaxy?”

He turns and doesn’t look back.

 

-

 

It goes like this:

Sneaking onto Padme’s ship is easy, but the time in hyperspace gives him time to think, and it’s all he can do not to step out from his hiding spot and talk to the senator to distract himself.

He tries to compartmentalize, tries to release his feelings into the Force, but all he can think about is how he’s failed. There’s a part of him that knows that he is not the only soul to blame. The machinations that had led to Anakin’s turning were largely out of his hands. But he’s always placed every burden on himself, and his awareness of this self-harming habit doesn’t mean he can stop.

He sighs, heart beating painfully in his chest. Rubbing at it, he closes his eyes.

It took him years to realize that the shattered pieces of his heart aren’t the result of one heartbreak, but many. He’s stitched himself back together so many times that he can’t tell where the scarring ends and where he begins. And he knows with utter certainty that no amount of shattering will kill him, no matter how much he may want it. He’s never wanted it more so than now, somewhere in hyperspace, careening towards a lava-torn planet with orders to kill the only person in his life that he would do quite literally anything for.

Sitting in the cramped storage space, he still doesn’t think he can endure the agony of another heartbreak. How much more can the universe take from him? All he’s ever done is give and give and _give,_ asking for nothing in return, and now the Force deems it necessary to gut him? To hollow him and leave him bleeding out? Has he not sacrificed enough? And now, in a final act, he will give everything he is to the galaxy - heart, soul, and body. 

The shift out of hyperspace is smooth. He sighs and waits.

He is a Jedi, and duty comes first.

 

-

 

It goes like this:

Mustafar is hot, unbearably so, and the air is thick and heavy with smoke. Everything is tinted red, and Obi-Wan thinks it fitting. As he spots Padme, for a heart-wrenching moment he believes her dead. Reaching out with the Force, he can just sense her Signature, faint and small, but still there. Then he sees Anakin, and the teary-eyed sadness evaporates. Anger, sharp and cold, washes through him as, again and again, his attempts at negotiations fail. 

As the duel commences, Obi-Wan’s anger wanes. Anakin’s eyes flicker from their familiar blue to that ghastly yellow, and with each switch Obi-Wan’s hope flares and fades. He knows Anakin’s moves as well as he knows his own - this is a dance they’ve done a thousand times, in sparring rooms and on foreign planets and in the middle of battle. Every move is pre-written, and though there are plenty of times Obi-Wan could go for a killing blow, he can’t. 

Once, long ago, when Anakin had been thinking about leaving the Jedi Order, Obi-Wan promised that he would go with him. And though he’s become everything Obi-Wan abhors - a liar, a traitor, a killer, a _Sith -_ there is a part of him that can’t hurt the little boy he’d raised. So he doesn’t. Instead, he defends himself, only lashing out to put more space between them. But dueling is a lulling thing, an action that requires him to think so many moves ahead that he can lose himself in it. He has to fight the urge to give in to the rhythm and let the killing blows land. 

Anakin, reckless as ever, pays no heed to the lava around them, and Obi-Wan finds himself catching him with the Force before he can tumble to his death.

Anakin glares at him. “Stop protecting me, Jedi. You gave up that right long ago.”

Obi-Wan jumps from the floating platform onto the rocky beach, gaining the high ground. “You gave up the right to look after yourself the moment you Fell.”

“You have no authority over me anymore. I am no longer a Jedi _slave.”_

Something in Obi-Wan cracks, and he tightens his grip on his lightsaber, fighting down the urge to snarl. “And you don’t think you’re a slave now? You’re nothing more than a pawn to Sidious. He’s manipulating you, Anakin. I am not your enemy; he is.”

“From a certain point of view, the Jedi are the enemy.”

Obi-Wan flinches at the familiar turn of phrase. He knows that somewhere along the way, the Jedi Order lost its purpose. Peacekeepers became soldiers, diplomats became warriors. “Trust me, Anakin, I’m under no illusion that the Jedi are perfect, or that we weren’t manipulated into this war.” 

Anakin’s eyes flicker from yellow to blue again. His brows furrow. “You’ve never said a word against the Order or the Council.”

He wishes he had. Maybe then, somehow, he would’ve saved his wayward brother. “Just because I didn’t say it doesn’t mean I didn’t think it. You never did understand subtlety.” 

Anakin shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Sidious will save Padme and my child – that’s all I want.”

“At the cost of the galaxy? Is this what Padme wants? He’s playing you for a fool!” he shouts. “All things end in death - there’s no stopping it. It’s inevitable, Anakin, you know this.”

“You’re the fool,” Anakin spits, eyes glowing yellow. “I’ve seen her die in my dreams, and I won’t lose her. Sidious is more powerful than you or your precious Jedi would have ever been.”

What’s left of Obi-Wan’s heart drops. That fear of losing a loved one isn’t something he can fight; isn’t something he can reason with. He understands it more than Anakin will believe. 

His breath stutters as realization hits him. 

He can’t save him. He never stood a chance.

A laugh bubbles up in his chest, hot and sharp. _I never could save anyone,_ he thinks.

“I failed you,” he says, voice breaking. “I’m so sorry for failing you."

“I hate you!” Anakin screams, face twisted into a snarl.

The words reverberate through Obi-Wan. He blinks, and wonders how those words could feel like vibroblades when he’s already been gutted and left to bleed out. Surely, there is no more pain that can be inflicted upon him. Has he not suffered enough?

 _No,_ he thinks, _I haven’t._

“You were my _brother,_ Anakin,” he yells, throat raw and eyes stinging. “I _loved_ you.”

Anakin staggers back, yellow eyes wide. “You’re incapable of it,” he says. “You, the perfect Jedi, would never sink so low. Attachments are forbidden, remember?” 

“I loved you,” he repeats. It burns him to admit it, to acknowledge the weakness. “Master Yoda once told me attachment would be my downfall. I suppose he was right." 

In front of him, Anakin’s gone pale. “Liar,” he seethes, shaking his head. “Liar!” He glares at Obi-Wan. “I’m not wrong. The Jedi _are_ the enemy. I can’t be wrong.”

He jumps from the platform before Obi-Wan can talk sense into him. Obi-Wan acts without thinking, lightsaber swinging through the air, separating Anakin from his remaining flesh limbs. The noise that escapes Anakin hits Obi-Wan in the gut and for a moment he can’t breathe. 

He’s trembling again. 

All at once, Obi-Wan wants to scream. He wants to rage against Anakin, wants to kick him while he’s down, wants to leave him here on the shores of his destruction and let him burn. There are times where his mercy is ill-placed, and as another blast of heat from the lava river buffets him, he knows it would be a mercy to kill Anakin. 

He’s not feeling merciful.

He wants Anakin to suffer for all he’s done: for his selfishness, for his insecurity, for placing his trust in the wrong people.

Anakin groans, his robotic arm clutching at the stones around him. His eyes are blue.

And for a moment, all Obi-Wan can see is the nine-year-old boy he’d met, all those years ago.

Again, Obi-Wan moves without registering, dropping his ’saber and dragging the man up the bank before the lava touches him. Around him, the Force shrieks in warning, and through the black smoke he can just make out a ship landing at the station.

“He’s here,” Anakin says, teeth gritted in pain. “Kill me, and run.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “No, I can save you, I can _save_ you, I can, just - “

Anakin’s metal hand is hot enough that it burns him when it grabs his arm. “Save her,” Anakin says, eyes hard. “Save her, and you’ve saved me.”

There’s no time to reason with him. Sidious is getting closer and the Darkness presses down on him, smothering. He wants to run, wants to drag Anakin away, wants to aks why he did it, why he Fell, why his eyes are blue again, why why _why –_

He breathes. Calls his lightsaber to him. The mental link they share, dying as it is, pulses in the back of his mind and he reaches out, attempting to soothe. He is a Jedi, and duty comes first. 

In one smooth movement, it’s over. 

 

-

 

It goes like this:

He remembers turning on his weapon and watching his brother die. He remembers the moment right before the agony set in, like watching a bone break but not yet registering the pain. He remembers thinking _this pain is worse than Anakin’s Fall,_ remembers thinking _I didn’t know there was anything in me left to break._

He remembers, vaguely, pushing Anakin’s body into the lava, movements robotic, knowing somehow that if he doesn’t Sidious will take his brother’s body and attempt to revive it by any means necessary.

Mostly, though, he remembers gathering Padme’s body in his arms and rushing to the nearest medical station, remembers calling Bail and asking him to meet them there. He remembers Padme dying on childbirth and handing one of the twins to Bail. The trip to his room is a blur, but when he registers the sound of the door closing his breath catches in his chest. Finally, he allows the tears to flow, and he weeps like he’s only ever done once before, on the eve of his Master’s death.

He doesn’t dream, too exhausted to even change from his dirty, bloody robes into sleepwear.

In the morning, he wakes with dry, red-rimmed eyes. His limbs are heavy, his joints protesting every move. With careful movements he washes the battle of Mustafar from his body, exposing ‘saber burns, along with the blaster burn gained on Utapau. He tries to call on the Force to heal him, but it still feels raw to the touch. Turning off the water, he searches for bacta bandages and patches himself up. Civilian clothing feels odd against his skin.

Then, with a sigh, he opens his door and heads towards the control room. Bail and Yoda are already there, looking as wrung-out as he feels. There’s a part of him that wants to simply stop existing, and for a moment he fervently hopes the ground will open up and swallow him whole. He shakes his head.

He is a Jedi, and duty comes first.

“Where shall we put the twins?"

 

 


End file.
